Rename Multiple Files Efficiently Using Excel or Google Docs

Renaming multiples files on your Windows computer is easy. Select all the files, press F2 and type some descriptive text. Windows will append a unique sequence number to each of the file names.

That's a fairly quick solution but not very flexible because you don't get to specify any choices or criteria.

For instance, how do you append the current date to the filename ? Or you want to replace only certain words in the file names (like a spelling error)? Or you want files to follow a different renaming system like file-A.jpg instead of the default file(1).jpg.

To rename files in bulk more efficiently, you can either learn some complex shell scripting language (SED, AWK, Perl) or switch to something more simple  - a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Type cmd and switch (using "cd" command) to the directory that contains the files you want to rename in bulk.

Step 2: Type "dir /b" to see a skeleton list of all files in the current directory. Copy that file list to the clipboard by selecting Mark from the contextual menu.

Step 3: The fun starts now. Fire your copy of Microsoft Excel or Google Docs Spreadsheets and paste those file names into the first spreadsheet column.

Step 4: In the blank adjacent column, add a corresponding Excel function - for instance, use SUBSTITUTE to change specific text in the filenames, use CONCATENATE() with DATE() if you want to add date to the filename, etc.

*For more complex criteria, you may want to put the file extensions in a separate column by splitting the file name using period (.) as the delimiter.

Step 5: Your source filenames are now in column A while the Destination files are in column B - we will now convert this into a DOS rename command.

In Column C, type the following Excel formula and your command is ready to be executed.

=CONCATENATE("ren ",A1, " ", B1)

Copy paste the same formula across all cells in column C for which you have corresponding values in Column A or B.

We are almost done. Copy all the values from column C to the clipboard and paste them inside the DOS window or better still, put them inside a new text file and give it a name like rename.bat.

Execute and all files that match the criteria are renamed instantly.

More useful DOS Commands

Save Web Pages to Google Docs

You can now easily store web pages, images and other HTML content to Google Documents using gDocsBar - a recommended Firefox add-on for Google Docs users.

Google Docs maintains the original formatting of web pages and the hyperlinks very similar to Google Notebook or other web clipping software discussed before.

To save web pages in Google Docs, highlight the content with your mouse and drag that selection onto the gDocsBar window. Your web clipping will be saved as a new document in Google Docs.

GDocsBar - Note that this method works only with websites and won't allow you to save clippings from Word Documents or PDF files onto Google Docs.

If you want to save web pages to Google Docs in IE, open a blank Google Document in a new tab and then drag-n-drop content from that webpage onto this Google document. Alternatively, you can do a simple copy paste.

Indian Language Support in Google Docs & Google Apps

Google Docs in Google Apps now supports all popular local languages of India including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Bengali, Marathi and Oriya.

To switch the interface from English to an Indian language, go to settings and choose your desired language from the drop down.

Other than creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations, Google Docs also has an in-built spell checker for each of the localized Indian languages. via

New Google Docs Features – Offline Editing, YouTube Video Embeds

Google add two new features in Google Docs today - offline support and video embeds - you can insert YouTube videos in Google Docs or upload video clips from the hard drive.

Using the Google Gears extension in Firefox or IE, you can now view or edit existing documents in Google Docs without requiring an always-on Internet connection - it is however not possible to create new word documents while you are offline in Google Docs.

And any changes that you make to the documents locally will automatically get synched to Google Docs the next time you connect to the Internet.

Details on Google Blog. Scoble at Fastcompany.tv has an interview with Ken Norton of the Google Docs team where they discuss issues like two people editing the same document concurrently but in offline mode. Some more thoughts:

Rafe - "Offline access for Google's spreadsheet and presentation app will follow after the word processor rollout is complete."

Kevin - "While folks at the Google are messing with Google Gears: any chance for Safari or Opera support? There's more to the web than IE and Firefox."

Mathew - "Zoho’s services are great, and I use Zoho Show in particular a fair bit, but when it comes to trusting a company with my data I would have to come down on the side of Google."

Josh - "So what has been taking Google so long? Why isn't it eating its own dogfood and releasing more of its web apps with Gears support? What about Gmail? "

Zoho  already supports offline access via the same Google Gears plugin. See full list of Google Gears compatible web applications.

Open Your Google Docs Presentations in Microsoft PowerPoint

Forget the hack, Google Docs now lets you export presentations as PPT files in addition to supporting the PDF format. You can also view your Google Presentations offline in the web browser using the Google Gears extension.

To save a Google Presentation in PPT format, go to the File menu and click "Save as PPT". The export feature has been simultaneously enabled both in standard Google Docs and the Google Apps version. From Google Blog and What's new.

Upload Very Large PowerPoint Presentation Files to SlideShare

If the size of your PowerPoint Presentation is too big to be an email attachment, you can either spend some timecompressing the PPT file or a better option is that you upload the presentation on to Slideshare.

Slideshare now lets you to upload PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files upto 50 MB in size.

That's lot more space per file than other competing players. For example, Google Docs Presentations lets you upload PPT or PPS files upto 2 MB only while that limit is 10 MB in the case of Zoho Show.

Track Visitors To Google Docs; Know When People Open & Read Your Documents

How do you know if the Word document you wrote in Google Docs has been read by the boss or not ?  Or how do you track the number of people who opened your Google Docs document that you published a public web page.

Where did the traffic come from? How long the visitors stayed? Such data is easy to track with Google Analytics but unfortunately, Google won't let you insert JavaScript code into Google Documents. So here's a simple workaround to help you track visitors to your documents in Google Docs.

Add Document Tracking to Google Docs:

The idea is simple. Instead of adding JavaScript to your Google Docs pages, you will will insert a tracking pixel image (visible or hidden) somewhere in the body of your document. When a recipient opens that document, the action is registered as a visit by the tracking code. Here are the steps involved:

Step 1. Go to statcounter.com (or any web statistics program) and register for a free account. Under "Install Code", choose the following options:

Invisible Counter -> Google Pages -> HTML only counter. Statcounter will now generate some HTML code enclosed in a <div> tag. Strip everything except the IMG tag such that your final code looks something like this:

<img src="http://c46.statcounter.com/3732481/0/e1fdff4b/1/" height="1" width="1" border="0" alt="For Traffic Stats in Google Docs" />

Step 2. Open the Google Docs document that you want to track. Select "Edit HTML" option from the Edit menu of Google Docs toolbar. Now copy-paste the HTML tracking code we generated in step 1 and save the document.

You're done. When people open the document inside Google Docs or as a public web page, they will be connected to the Internet and hence their visit will be registered by statcounter.

You get to know the exact date time when the document was accessed, the physical location of the reader, the duration of his stay and some other details like browser, OS, ISP, etc. Here's a sample tracking report generated by my stats program.

Statcounter is also integrated with Google Maps to help you easily visualize the location of Google Docs visitors. And you can use the same technique to track email messages.

Update: The above trick is for Word documents in Google Docs. If you like to track visitors to your spreadsheets in Google Docs, you may write a Google Gadget integrated with Google Analytics and insert that into your spreadsheet.